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moms must demand action

Talk to any mom and she will tell you that the sound of quiet is a beautiful thing.

Except when it isn’t.

I heard a news anchor this week talking about how the issue of gun control was no longer dominating the airwaves. Hmm… isn’t it also up to our journalists to keep important issues on the front burner? At least that’s what I learned in journalism school.

I am certain that millions of moms aren’t going to keep quiet on the need for gun control. And we have the power of numbers. There are 84 million mothers in the United States and only 4 million NRA members.

See what I mean? Why would we be bullied by them?!

Many years ago, I was a victim of gun violence. I had someone slam me across the head with a gun, screaming in my face that he was going to kill me. He didn’t. I got away. I was lucky.

But do you know there have been about 500 people killed by guns in this country since the still incomprehensible Newtown shooting. Is this the kind of country you want to live in?

“Weapons designed for the battlefield have a home in our streets. Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.”

I’m not an NRA member and I am a mom of 5. However, your numbers are a bit off. There were 323 people killed by guns last YEAR in the US. There were 596 killed by HAMMERS. So we should outlaw hammers? The number one weapon in assaults is a baseball bat. So would you like to outlaw those next? I have 4 boys that played traveling tournament baseball. We probably own 8 or 9 bats. Should I turn them all in to the police. They are the number 1 weapon of choice in assaults and murders…

I have very well behaved guns. They’ve never gotten up, walked out the door and attacked anyone. The most they’ve ever shot is a target or the coyote that was attacking my dog and let’s be truthful. That gun did not jump up and say – hey I want to shoot that target. I chose to aim and pull the trigger. Let’s quit blaming the inanimate object and blame the fact that mental health care in this country is substandard and almost impossible to afford.

Whoops, cat stepped on my computer (seriously…) but I was going to say you are WAY off on those stats. In 2010, for example, “guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.” Over 11,000 of those were homicides (http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-de.....tatistics/). Just because you use your guns properly doesn’t mean everyone else will. You, as a presumably sane person, are not the target of any proposed restrictions and will still be able to own and use your guns.

Thanks for posting this Kelcey, and for continuing to fight this fight. We can make a change if we refuse to be silent any longer.

I’d like to point out that the comparisons of guns to things like cars, baseball bats, etc. that I’ve seen lately are a bit off. The primary use of a firearm is TO KILL SOMETHING or someone. For a “should we regulate this too?” kind of comparison, we should compare guns to other items whose primary use is TO KILL SOMETHING or someone: explosives, bombs, chemical weapons, etc. And yes, I believe access to all of those things should be closely regulated.

Amy, according the the FBI more people were killed between 2006-2010 by someone using a gun than all other weapons (including hammers) COMBINED. Look it up for yourself. The numbers are on the FBI’s website. It is fine, admirable even, to be a safe gun owner. But please be an informed one as well. It’s responsible gun owners like you who really should be driving this discussion, coming up with real ideas for how to fix our broken system.

I am sorry to see that the response to the Newtown shootings is coming down to gun control. There are thousands of laws on the books for controlling guns, and controlling who has them. And law-abiding citizens who own guns are obeying those laws. What you don’t see in the media are the stories where the presence of a gun totally stopped the shooter before he was able to kill many people. What you don’t see in the media is the times that a woman, alone at home or with her children, was able to protect herself and children from harm. Let’s face it, if your house is broken into, or you are threatened, it’s not because the perpetrators are law-abiding citizens. The shootings at schools and malls and movie theaters are not perpetrated by law abiding citizens. After all, Newtown was a gun free zone. The police were several minutes away (they are a minimun of twenty minutes away from where I live). This shooter had minutes to shoot before anyone who could stop him showed up. (It took the police 6 minutes to show up at the Aurora theater, meanwhile there were at least 3 citizens with concealed carry permits who were killed because they obeyed the law-this was a gun free zone.)

While Newtown, and Centennial, and Virginia tech, and others, including in Norway and Canada, are horrible tragedies, I believe that any more gun control is only going to take away from my right to be safe, and place more and more power in the hands of criminals who will only become bolder and bolder as their fear of consequences is diminished by taking power away from law abiding citizens.

And do not confuse assault weapons with what they want to take away. Assault weapons are only available to the military. What you can buy that looks like an assault weapon isn’t. It only looks that way because it’s “cool”. Otherwise it works just like a hunting rifle.

Do not blame the guns. They are inanimate. Blame the people who use them for crimes, because those people will commit crimes whether they have a gun or not.

Arming law-abiding citizens have not been proven to deter or stop these mass shootings. That’s why we don’t see stories about it. (http://www.motherjones.com/pol.....-shootings) There was an armed security guard present at Columbine. It didn’t help. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....47096.html). And what about a few months ago when NYPD officers opened fire on a shooter near the Empire State Building during the morning commuter? The gunman killed one man, a former coworker. The NYPD killed him and injured NINE bystanders.

For every story about “a woman protecting her children” with a gun, there are dozens about children accidentally killed by guns in the home. If you own a gun, you are statistically more likely to be killed by a gun. 22 percent more likely, to be exact (http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence).

The reason this is “coming down to gun control” is because it has to. Nearly all developed nations have much stricter gun control laws than we do and far fewer gun deaths. This is not a coincidence. It’s time we all get educated about the facts and do something about them. We need to stop hiding behind an antiquated amendment to our constitution enacted over 200 years ago for a very different reason than the way it is applied today. There are regulations and limitations to plenty of other parts of the constitution and this one should be no different.

I do see these stories in the media, Susan. I watched a piece today about the off-duty police officer who stopped a shooting in a mall. I read a news story about a mother who shot the intruder who was invading her home. I don’t understand, though, on how restrictions like the ones outlined affect those folks at all? Am I missing something here?

Kelcey, thanks for posting this information. I’ve been haunted by the silence this week. I can’t find anything about this shooting and I want to make noise about it so the conversation doesn’t stop until something changes. Now I have some ideas about how to make my voice heard. This is unacceptable. There are many aspects to this crisis in our country and in our world, and this is one of the ways to stop it.

So Susan, you think that the solution to preventing these types of attacks is more guns? A gun carried in your handbag, a gun in the teacher’s drawer, a guard at the school gate with a gun? Why not just put a gun in your kids schoolbag so he can protect himself?

An instrument that can kill 26 people in a matter of minutes qualifies in my book as an assault weapon. The gun used in the Newtown killing was a legally obtained weapon.

I find it so interesting how the people who own guns (not just here but in general) are all “don’t blame the guns!”… really? I am sorry, I know that there were many other factors involved in this but it was a man with a GUN that killed 26 people in that school-. With an insane amount of ammunition. He didn’t have a hammer or a baseball bat or a fricken pair of scissors. It was a gun(s). So don’t pretend guns are not part of the issue. That is ignorant.

Great post, Kelcey. I just need to remind people that gun control isn’t about blaming the guns. It’s about having better measures and requirements for the people who obtain guns. Police Officers go through annual training, periodic certification and mental evaluations…let’s consider THOSE kinds of things beyond just waiting periods and background checks when allowing our citizens the rights to own them. You can own them…that’s fine…do your part to prove yourself capable and trustworthy to do so.